Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society

Evidence

By the 1960s, SDS believed that the official Marxist-Leninist system of the Soviet Union had congealed into an undemocratic, centralized bureaucracy. The revolutionary means had become its ends. In the USSR, the hierarchical vanguard Party was now the state. SDS’s approach—perhaps the thing that was truly “new” about the New Left—dictated that they should adopt organizational forms now that they would like to see in the world they wanted to create. The name given to this was “prefigurative politics”—what you are doing now will prefigure, or show a glimpse of, the world you want to live in tomorrow. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 82

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘prefigurative politics’ as adopting now the organizational forms you want in the future society.
• XREF: connects to: Consensus-based horizontal structures let tiny minorities veto prominent allies — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 266; Leaderless structures hide informal rules that exceed formal authoritarianism — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 772; Movement strategy is a bottom-up capture of every level of government — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 179 (+4 more)